Women Of Sex Tech

Women Of Sex Tech
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*First Published: May 5, 2020, 1:37 pm CDT

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Ana Valens

Posted on May 5, 2020 Updated on May 5, 2020, 1:42 pm CDT
On Saturday, the Women of Sex Tech hosted its first virtual conference on the live streaming service Crowdcast. It was a last-minute switch that cost the organization “a couple hundred bucks,” organizers said. The night before, YouTube abruptly banned Women of Sex Tech from streaming the event in what the video platform now says was an automated reporting error.
The Women of Sex Tech Virtual Conference 2020, which required RSVP but was free to attend, included panels discussing the EARN IT Act , abortion access during the COVID-19 pandemic, online dating as a digital sexual abuse survivor, and fostering erotic mindfulness with one’s body during social isolation .
This reporter attended nine panels part of the Women of Sex Tech Virtual Conference and found the event educational in nature with no graphic sexual content. None of the event material seen by the Daily Dot appeared to violate YouTube’s nudity and sexual content policies , which ban “explicit content meant to be sexually gratifying,” including pornography and nudity.
Women of Sex Tech President Alison Falk told the Daily Dot that at first, she “didn’t have any trouble” testing the stream. But on Friday, a test with the event’s first speaker was interrupted after four minutes.
“The video cut off saying that it had been removed for violating community guidelines,” Falk said. “I was so confused, I thought it had to be a glitch considering there was no mention of sex or adult content at that time.”
Falk tested the stream three more times with Vice President SX Noir , and on each attempt, YouTube found the account in violation of its community guidelines. The account was prevented from streaming for more than four minutes. No “sexual verbiage” was used in these test videos, Noir said in a Friday night email obtained by the Daily Dot. Each video test was unlisted, and thus no YouTube user could have flagged the organization’s videos.
“We don’t know what content violated [YouTube’s guidelines], we don’t know what happened, we have not heard any kind of clarification from YouTube,” Noir told the Daily Dot. “I think that’s part of the game that these big tech companies play. They leave you in the dark and they don’t have to explain to you what content violated Terms of Service, right? … We just figure, OK, yep, we’re talking about sex, so we won’t be able to use these major platforms everybody uses to connect.”
Women of Sex Tech initially began in 2015 as a private industry group and has since branched out to a community-building organization. The group is trans-inclusive, sex worker-centered, and sexually radical in its approach to the adult industry.
On Tuesday morning, YouTube confirmed to the Daily Dot that removals of the streams were false positives issued by YouTube’s automated content moderation system.
“We have made temporary adjustments to protect our extended workforce in response to COVID-19 that results in automated systems removing some content without human review,” a YouTube spokesperson told the Daily Dot. “We know that this may result in some videos being removed that do not violate our policies, but this allows us to continue to act quickly and protect our ecosystem. If creators think that their content was removed in error, they can appeal decisions and our teams will take a look.”
YouTube has since put protections in place to make an erroneous removal less likely for Women of Sex Tech’s YouTube channel. But mistrust remains a core issue for many sex workers, sex tech members, and pleasure activists operating outside the mainstream.
Women of Sex Tech’s community members often find their accounts are inexplicably deleted, refused advertisement, or not able to use payment processors, among many other issues, Falk said. The organization itself has had issues maintaining its presence on Facebook and said emails are regularly tossed into spam folders or simply disappear. It’s well-documented that sex workers, adult creators, and sex tech innovators have faced censorship on other social media platforms including Twitter , Patreon , Facebook , Instagram , Twitch , and Steam .
“We are grateful to have our account capabilities restored but it’s important that there is an acknowledgment of the frequency in which this happens to accounts who don’t have the privilege of Google investigating issues due to inquiries from the press,” Falk said in a follow-up statement to the Daily Dot. “What about all the accounts presenting on similar topics as we do that have been shadowbanned, demonetized, or have also had their videos ‘accidentally’ removed due to smart detection? Are those actually accidents?”
Ana Valens is a reporter specializing in online queer communities, marginalized identities, and adult content creation. She is a former Daily Dot staff writer. Her work has appeared at Vice, Vox, Truthout, Bitch Media, Kill Screen, Rolling Stone, and the Toast. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, and spends her free time developing queer adult games.
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Quality sex tech is out there, and women entrepreneurs are leading the charge.

All products featured here are independently selected by our editors and writers. If you buy something through links on our site, Mashable may earn an affiliate commission.

Maude's line of lubricants, condoms, and vibrator.
Credit: maude

Pulse's Warming Dispenser and lubricants.
Credit: pulse

Unbound's line of sex toys, lubricants, and more.
Credit: unbound

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Anyone who's shopped for a sex toy knows that searching for a safe, beautiful, well-designed toy can sometimes mean wading through a sea of products plagued by off-putting marketing, questionable safety, or both.
But quality sex tech is out there, and some of the most exciting offerings come from women working to make the industry more approachable.
The products: Dame offers two very cute vibrators meant for clitoral stimulation: The the teeny Fin ($75) which sits between two fingers, and the Eva II ($135), which is worn hands-free thanks to "flexible wings that tuck under the labia while [it] sits on top." Both can be used alone or during sex.
The story: Dame is brainchild of Alexandra Fine and Janet Lieberman. Fine, who holds a masters degree in clinical psychology from Columbia University, tells Mashable she met Lieberman, a mechanical engineer and MIT alum, in June 2014 upon learning that each had separately planned to start her own sex toy company.
Fine says their combined talents – her interest in branding and market research and Lieberman's interest in designing a safe, high quality toy – led them to launch an Indiegogo campaign for their first vibrator Eva in October of 2014. By late February of the following year, Fine says Dame shipped its first round of products. It's since expanded its line, launching Fin in November 2016, and a redesign of its first vibrator, the Eva II, in November 2017.
For Fine, running a sex toy startup is the culmination of a long-time interest in sexuality – she'd originally planned to become a sex therapist – and a desire to bring something to market that she felt was more women-focused in its messaging than what was currently on offer.
"None of [those products] even really resonated with me and how I felt these toys should be branded," she says. "You still see a lot of them with women in lingerie, taking off their high-heels. It often has a very male gaze that's hard to deny in their branding. It just never related to me or how I felt about masturbation or using a toy."
Plus, Dame wanted to build a sex toy that was well-made in an industry where Fine says products are largely unregulated .
Case in point: A vibrator she once owned actually caught fire after its battery shorted out.
"It was kind of epic, I'm not gonna lie," she jokes. "I think I bragged about it. But it's because the products aren't well made, and people don't value it, and there's no regulation when there should be."
In keeping with a focus on quality, both of Dame's vibrators are designed in-house, made with medical-grade silicone, and are water resistant.
The company plans to launch three new designs in 2018.
The products: Maude's line includes rise. condoms ($12 for a 10-pack), two forms of lubricant (both $25), and the vibe . massager ($45).
The story: " Maude is very much a gender inclusive or unisex brand," says CEO Eva Goicochea. "We aren’t a women-for-women company, per se – we’re more of a women for everyone company."
Before launching the company alongside her co-founder, CPO Dina Epstein, in early April, Goicochea says she spent more than 10 years working in branding, including a stint at clothing retailer Everlane.
She befriended Epstein, an industrial designer who's worked for lingerie retailer Kiki De Montparnasse and for sex toy retailer Doc Johnson, and together they decided to launch Maude, a company that sells minimalist products for the bedroom.
Two years later, the product line features lubricants -- "an absolute must-have," says Goicochea -- housed in chic Aesop soap-like bottles and artfully packaged condoms.
Another bedroom essential? A vibrator!
Says Goicochea: "When you look at the orgasm gap, women often have to go to a sex shop to get a toy...That's a really uncomfortable experience, it's over-assorted, it's confusing, you don't really have any options that are minimal. Everything's quite bright and loud. And we were like, this is an absolute must-have for many people in order to have an orgasm, so why isn't it created and treated like an essential?"
Maude's sleek, gray version is made with FDA-approved silicone .
The products: A warming lubricant dispenser ($229), two varieties of lube sets (both $29.95) and lube samples ($5).
The story: For a product often considered an integral part of sex, the user experience associated with lube is decidedly lacking. Pulse founder Amy Buckalter decided to give the experience a much-needed update after experiencing it firsthand.
"I had entered into menopause, was using a lot more lubricant, and I couldn't believe [the more] I thought about it how archaic the entire user experience is for the 21st century on a variety of levels," she says.
Suspecting she wasn't alone in feeling this way, Buckalter turned to a wider audience for confirmation. More than 400 survey responses later, she knew she was onto something. So in 2013, she left her 25-year career in branding for the sporting goods industry and became sex tech entrepreneur.
Enter: the Pulse Warming Dispenser, a small bedside machine that heats and dispenses lubricant into the palm of its owner's hand. No rifling through bedside drawers, no bottles to open, just hold out your hand and get back to business.
The dispenser works with either of Pulse's two lubricant offerings -- one water-based, one aloe-based. And unlike lubricants that promise a warming sensation delivered via chemical, Pulse warms the old-fashioned way.
Buckalter has big plans for the technology behind her product – she's says she's hoping to expand her business to build warming technology for other types of lotions used in body care and baby care.
The products: Though Unbound's shop (opens in a new tab) has traditionally featured sex toys, fetish products, lubricants, and more from a range of outside brands, the company is shifting to selling only its own line of products. This includes three pink vibrators (priced from $17 to $99), three types of lube (priced from $15 to $35), personal wipes ($16) kinky toys (from $14 to $24), a dildo ($29) – plus jewelry, accessories and more.
Unbound also offers quarterly subscription kits filled with products from its house line.
The story: When Unbound CEO Polly Rodriguez was diagnosed with cancer in her early 20s , she tells Mashable that the experience "changed the way I saw the world," specifically her views of women's sexuality.
"When I was going through radiation treatment, my doctors told me that I would never have children, but they didn’t talk to me at all about how that would affect my sex life," she says. "As I got older, I kind of realized how marginalized female and non-binary individuals are when it comes to their sexuality being a core health issue as opposed to just a nice-to-have."
So in hopes of challenging that narrative, she launched Unbound, a sex-toy retailer that doubles as a destination for writing from sex workers, sex educators, and company staffers. Topics covered in its in-house publication, Unbound Magazine range from erotic massage tips to an explainer on the SESTA and FOSTA bills opposed by many sex workers .
And while the shop initially launched with products from other companies, Rodriguez says the company's own line is quickly becoming its core product.
She says: "Most recently our predominant focus is on making best-in-class products that are really affordable and accessible to the everyday consumer and also creating a lot of content that helps bridge that educational gap that we see the public schools kind of retreating back from teaching."
But what sets Unbound apart is its subscription model – an offering Rodriguez says performs well with men and with older couples.
"We found that for couples, especially those that were married and in an older demographic, they were really curious about the category but suffered from decision and choice fatigue," she says. The boxes -- themed sets featuring full-size products and sent every three months -- meaning her customers can test out products they might not have selected on their own.
The entrepreneurs behind these companies are far from the only women freshening up their industry. In fact, there's a large community of women working in all areas of sex tech. Learn more on their website .
This post is part of Mashable's Masturbation Week . May is National Masturbation Month, so we're celebrating by exploring the many facets of self-love.

Women Are Revolutionizing the Sex Tech Industry

"With the advent of social media and the internet, people are more empowered to speak up for themselves and talk about these issues."

Story and photography by Maxwell Vice
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Sexual gratification has always been a huge motivator in terms of technological innovation — just look at the way porn revolutionized online payment processing and streaming . However, a less publicized aspect of sex tech progress has also recently emerged in the form of more concrete, physical innovations, particularly for women. From Sweet Vibrations' tuLips clit vibrator to WankzVR 's popular range of virtual reality experiences catering to women to the rise of crystal dildos , technology exclusively dedicated to vulvic pleasure has slowly gone from a whispered-about taboo to a full-blown conversation about innovation in the mainstream tech world.
Granted, the sex toy industry has always been somewhat geared toward those with vulvas, apart from things such as primarily femme-presenting sex robots or the Autoblow AI , which utilizes machine learning to improve the blowjob experience. However, given the issues we face in relation to the (mostly heterosexual) female-male orgasm gap , not to mention mainstream porn's prioritization of the male gaze , it seems like the right thing at the moment is to prioritize conversations about improving upon vulvic orgasms, especially given American sex culture's not-so-secret aversion to female pleasure. Thankfully, things appear to already be improving in terms of society's skittish approach to the female orgasm, and you have a handful of innovative, women-led companies to thank for that.
Just take the success story of sex toy company Lora DiCarlo , which made headlines earlier this year after their Osé Robotic Massager (pictured above) had its CES Innovation Award in robotics suddenly rescinded due to the product being "immoral, obscene, indecent, profane" — despite the groundbreaking technology holding eight patents with applications not even necessarily exclusive to sex toys. Thankfully, after much outcry over the obvious gender bias of the situation, the award was recently returned to Lora DiCarlo with an apology from the governing body behind the event. Even better? According to founder Lora Haddock, in addition to securing $2 million in funding from investors in the wake of the incident going viral, the Lora DiCarlo team is also working with them to "help them with some of their gendered language," "how to create a safe environment for all genders," and "create that conversation not just around gender, but sexuality and sex, as well."
"We've created this social mission that really boosts gender equity," Haddocks says, before adding that the company's triumph is largely thanks to the large number of (primarily) women who supported them. "A surprising amount of people rallied behind us. It wasn't us who made the change alone."
Lorals founder Melanie Cristol also recalls overcoming a similar experience with overt gender bias while developing her flagship product: a single-use, latex panty meant to encourage the "80 pe
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